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SnuggleTruck: Rejected app goes cuddly for Apple approval

Imagine you're an iOS game developer, and your new app's theme focuses on smuggling illegal immigrants over the border. It offers a politically charged satiric scenario, one that could possibly offend customers. Apple reviewers consider the game, but they determine that it fails the smell test. Too tasteless -- not gonna make it into the App Store. What do you do?

If you're Owlchemy Labs, what you do is this: you redesign your somewhat edgy software to provide exactly the same gameplay, but change the artwork and sounds to provide an even more ironic take on the original.

Owlchemy substituted happy zoo animals for the original illegal immigrants. The cuddly creatures "escape from the wilderness for the comfort of a zoo, where they are provided with plenty of food, shelter and state-of-the-art healthcare." Basically, Apple's rejection allowed Owlchemy Labs to provide another layer of metatextual satire on top of the original satiric content.

The mind boggles.

Nevertheless, Apple happily approved this extremely subversive software now that people had to think before becoming offended. The original SmuggleTruck software is available for sale on both Mac and Windows, and it offers the new SnuggleTruck mode as a built-in extra.

SnuggleTruck is now available for sale on iTunes for US$1.99 for the iPhone version and $2.99 for the iPad HD version.

A video from the developers that explains the redesign follows after the break.

[via Joystiq]





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Imagine you're an iOS game developer, and your new app's theme focuses on smuggling illegal immigrants over the border. It offers a...
 

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Arms III

I did the same thing with a game i made called Arizona for iPad, they made me change it to Crab Crossing. it still has mexican music, tacos and burritos though lol

April 28 2011 at 4:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael Rose

For what it's worth, we're not saying either the original game OR the revamped, bunnies 'n critters versions are good ideas -- the serious issues raised by illegal migration, the human cost, the challenges to communities on both sides of the border, none of it is particularly fun or funny.

The point here is that an app that probably deserved to be rejected eventually made it into the store by changing the least significant piece of its messaging. It's not a good thing; in fact, it's probably a bad thing.

April 28 2011 at 3:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mgabrys

Here in Arizona, we have lots of attempts end up dying in the desert trying to walk here. Can you make a snuggly game that includes mummified carcasses and dying kids too?

What - isn't that funny and ironic too?

I want dead mexican babies on my iPad! GET IT TOGETHER!

April 28 2011 at 3:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ocean4815

You guys should do a review of Snake from WublaGames. I downloaded it yesterday, and it was just what I was looking for. Classic snake at it's best.

April 28 2011 at 2:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jaroslav

Funny, but I can't help it: the mind doesn't boggle, it gets boggled. (As in, "it boggles the mind!" or "This app is mind-boggling!" I will duck now.

April 28 2011 at 2:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Modano

Genius. If this wasn't their plan all along, it should have been!

April 28 2011 at 1:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mikehild

I was about to write a comment about how odd it is that an iPad-only version is a dollar more than a Universal version, but double-checked the app links first.

The cheaper one isn't Universal as the post states, but a standard iPhone version. My understanding was that "Universal" meant the same app included both iPhone and iPad optimized versions, noted in iTunes by the "+" in the Buy button.

April 28 2011 at 1:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to mikehild's comment
prisonnet

I like how there's still barbed wire over the logo for "SnuggleTruck." Barbed wire isn't very snuggly.

April 28 2011 at 1:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael@reinhartstudios.com

I love it... THINK before becoming offended. Great advice.

April 28 2011 at 1:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
AriX

That's hilarious.

April 28 2011 at 1:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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